Lead Engineer - Attendee Experience

Web Summit; Dublin; On-site; EUR 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Subsidised healthcare

Dental coverage

Employer pension contribution up to 6%

Dedicated in-house L&D department

Company MacBook

Generous annual leave

Wellness subsidy €1000/year

Job summary

Web Summit in Ireland is seeking a Lead Engineer for our attendee-facing web app. You will lead a small team alongside a product manager and designer, own the technical work and line-manage the engineers, with around 60% of your time writing code.

You’ll build and improve the web app used by attendees before and during events, ship incremental improvements end-to-end, and ensure performance and reliability when tens of thousands use it simultaneously.

Qualifications

• Strong Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL experience.
• Experience shipping customer-facing software in small, incremental steps.
• Experience growing a product while keeping components small and maintainable.
• Ability to implement safe production changes with tests and monitoring.
• Demonstrated skill in mentoring engineers and setting clear expectations.

Responsibilities

• Build and improve the attendee web app used before and during events.
• Ship small, end-to-end improvements and inform future work.
• Keep the app fast and reliable with tens of thousands of users.
• Help engineers grow through feedback, pairing and responsibility.
• Work on-site at events and bring insights back to the product.

Skills

Ruby on Rails

PostgreSQL

Customer-facing software

Leadership

Testing & deployment

Tools

Git

CI/CD

Job description

About Us:

How did Web Summit become, in the words of Forbes, “the best tech conference on the planet”? Meaningful connections. Our tech events are unmissable because we make it easier for the right people to meet and connect. Everyone at Web Summit works towards this goal.

And we’re just getting started.

We’re always looking to build on the impact we have already made at Web Summit. In the coming years we’ll take Web Summit to new markets, promoting global connectivity, highlighting important issues and connecting global leaders – all while making a positive impact on the environment and communities we encounter.

To build a better company, we have to better ourselves. We do that by finding the most ambitious people to work with us.

Web Summit brings together founders, investors, speakers, partners and attendees at technology events around the world. We're headquartered in Dublin, with engineering teams in Dublin, Lisbon and throughout Europe.

We build our own software because tightly integrated software lets us run the best events in the world. Our software helps attendees prepare, find relevant people and activities, and make connections.

About You:

As Lead Engineer for our attendee-facing web app, you'll shape how people prepare for and get the most from Web Summit. You'll lead a small team alongside a product manager and designer, own the technical work and line-manage the engineers, with around 60% of your time writing code.

What You'll Achieve

• Build and improve the web app attendees use before and during our events, working closely with Product and Design.


• Ship small improvements often, working end to end, and use what you learn to shape what comes next.


• Keep the app fast and reliable with tens of thousands of people on it at once, and safe to change while an event is running.


• Help engineers grow through clear expectations, useful feedback, pairing and opportunities to take on responsibility.


• Work on site at events, watch people use what you've built, and bring that back into the product.

Who You Are

• You care how it feels to use, not just how it's built.


• You measure your work by what people do differently, not by what shipped.


• You enjoy finding the version of an idea that needs less software.


• You'd rather find out this week than be sure next quarter.


• You explain your decisions clearly and make it easy for colleagues to question them.


• You've built something small that people ended up using for things you never planned.


• You share what you know.

What We’re Looking For

• Strong Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL experience. You're happy with server-rendered views and JavaScript where it earns its place.


• Experience shipping and improving customer-facing software in small, useful increments.


• Experience growing a product from a small set of building blocks, and keeping them small as the product grows.


• Experience making production changes safe through appropriate tests, monitoring, staged rollout and recovery plans.


• Demonstrated skill in developing engineers: setting clear expectations, giving useful feedback, delegating responsibility and addressing performance concerns fairly.

Benefits And Perks

• Subsidised healthcare, dental, employee assistance programme (EAP) and more.


• Employer pension contribution up to 6% for Irish-based employees


• A dedicated in-house L&D department, with access to workshops, online learning and resources to help you excel in your career development.


• Company MacBook, generous annual leave and flexible working arrangements.


• Our very own Tramway Team, which drives community and morale-boosting events for employees to participate in.


• Annual company get-togethers, charity days, and monthly wellbeing talks.


• Wellness subsidy issued to all employees of €1000 per year

At Web Summit, we embrace diversity and inclusion. We want talent from all walks of life to help us on our journey to digitise the conference sector. Hiring decisions are made purely on experience, skills and the needs of the business. We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.